President-elect Donald Trump’s surprising pick to lead the Pentagon — former Fox News personality Pete Hegseth — will have to publicly address scrutiny by Democrats over allegations from his past, controversial comments and his qualifications to run the largest government employer in the country during his confirmation hearing Tuesday.
When Trump announced in November over social media his intention to nominate Hegseth, it caught nearly everyone off guard. Shortly afterward, reports surfaced of an alleged sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement of veterans’ organizations Hegseth ran. To control the damage and prove his mettle, Hegseth barnstormed the Capitol for meetings with mostly Republican senators.
According to his lawyer, Hegseth paid a confidential settlement to the woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017, though he denies committing the crime. Hegseth has also denied he mismanaged finances at veterans’ organizations.
Some Republicans who initially seemed to be less supportive of Hegseth’s nomination after the reports surfaced have since rallied around him, and sources told CBS News last week that Republican Senate Majority Leader John Thune has privately told Trump he believes Hegseth will have enough votes to get confirmed.
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Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso said when asked whether Hegseth has the votes to be confirmed that he “certainly has the qualities that we need to lead the Pentagon.” But Barrasso added that “every senator gets to speak for themselves.”
“The meetings have gone very well. Things are heading in the right direction. The hearings start Tuesday, and they’re going to be consequential,” Barraso said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.” “People will listen and make their own decision.”
Hegseth’s attorney Tim Parlatore confirmed to CBS News that he met with the FBI for a background check interview “a few weeks ago” and the meeting lasted about two hours. Parlatore said in the interview with Hegseth, they “went through everything,” and Parlatore called it a “very thorough investigation.”
Parlatore said the FBI “interviewed a whole bunch of other people to follow up and corroborate. They pulled a bunch of records and just like we predicted in the beginning, the FBI background check would clear him, and you know, they found nothing remarkable.”
The FBI did not brief senators on its background check findings, according to a source familiar with the matter. In keeping with its customary practice, the FBI performed the check, and then passed the information along to the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Because Republicans control the Senate, Hegseth can afford to lose three Republican votes, with Vice President-elect JD Vance breaking any tie in his capacity as president of the Senate. But first, the clearest path to advancing to the Senate floor is via a majority on the comittee. The committee has a one-seat Republican majority, so if all Democrats oppose him, it would only take one Republican to defect to complicate his nomination to the floor.
Democrats on the committee have signaled they’ll use their time during Tuesday’s hearing to ask Hegseth about not only the allegations but also about his lack of senior leader experience.
Hegseth served in the Army National Guard and deployed to Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. He retired in 2021 at the rank of major.
“I want to ask him, what’s the largest organization that you’ve ever run? How big a budget have you ever planned and executed?” Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois told CBS News in an interview last week.
“I mean, the secretary of defense is going to be going to NATO and negotiating with allies and going to be managing 3 million personnel, going to be managing a budget of over $800 billion dollars,” Duckworth said. “Is he capable of doing that?” [MAYBE add a note on the experience of the last few defense secretaries, who all held high leadership roles in private industry or the military]
If Hegseth is confirmed, he will replace Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who was a four-star general and commanded U.S. Forces in the Middle East before retiring from the Army in 2016. Other recent Secretaries of Defense were James Mattis, who was a retired four-star general in the Marines, and Mark Esper, who right before becoming Secretary of Defense was the Secretary of the Army — and both of whom served under Trump in his first term.
Duckworth, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is an Iraq War combat veteran, said Hegseth has refused to meet with her and that the dates his team proposed would be after his confirmation hearing, instead of before.
A transition official told CBS News that Hegseth’s team intended to meet with the Democratic leadership of the Armed Services Committee before the committee’s other Democrats. In this case, that meant meeting with Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking member, which occurred on Jan. 8. Hegseth’s team is working to schedule meetings with more senators before and after the confirmation hearing.
Reed said in a statement after the meeting, “Today’s meeting did not relieve my concerns about Mr. Hegseth’s lack of qualifications and raised more questions than answers.”
One Republican senator on the Armed Services Committee who has not yet voiced her support for Hegseth is Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. Ernst, who served in the Army National Guard, has moved closer to supporting Hegseth after meeting with him. After her first meeting, she declined in a Fox News interview to say whether she would support him, though she did say she supported the vetting process.
But after another meeting, she said in a statement that she had “encouraging conversations” with Hegseth. She added that as she supports “Pete through this process, I look forward to a fair hearing based on truth, not anonymous sources.”
On “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Barrasso called Ernst a “warrior” and a “patriot” and said she had met with Hegseth at least twice.
“She’s going to ask additional questions at the hearing on Tuesday and ultimately make her decision,” Barrasso said. “With regard to the FBI report, reported today that the chairman and the ranking member of the committee have seen the report already.”
Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a list of 72 questions she has for Hegseth covering the allegations and Hegseth’s stances on issues like women should not be in combat roles and whether senior military officers, like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown, should be fired.
Kaia Hubbard and
contributed to this report.
